


Hidden things

by SharpestRose



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:36:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ginny's not what she seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden things

Robes can hide a lot. They fall, dead black stifling castrating things, from neck to ankle. Sensible black that doesn't show dirt or blood or ink. Robes hide the bleeding that begins for Ginny as it does for all girls of her age, a warm trickle of cells that reminds her how much power hides under her robes.

Robes hide the small ripening bumps on her chest, the pale Celtic skin that shows the blue constellations of her veins like a whisper through silk. Red hair, hair that witches of old would recognise as belonging to one of their own. It catches the leaves and tangles about her face and smells like incense. She's the seventh child of a seventh child and she's never needed a wand, stupid little phallic thing that can sprinkle sparks and perform party tricks. What would Ginny need such a toy for?

She's better at killing chickens now, doesn't stain herself with their rust, avoids their flailing claws and beaks. She calls on Oshun, Oya, Yemalla, and pities those poor anemic girls she sits beside in class each day. They'll never understand what they could be. Who they could be.

The little green snakes that she calls to her side don't like it when she gives them orders. There has never been a girl parselmouth before, and they resent her power over them. She mocks their anger, tells them to bring her apples, laughs when they hiss at her. She never wanted their love, obedience is enough.

All the love she needs is waiting for her to unlock it. Three pages, torn from a diary by a nervous child who feared losing her only confidant and friend. Stored away in a keepsake box and forgotten, found again one summer night when the tides were pulling at her flat young belly and she knew her power was matched against him now. A few herbs, a little blood, words that not even the oldest and wisest teachers remember and a little tear off one corner, just a little paper. Still enough left to do this a hundred times more, should she wish to.

His hair is black, his eyes hooded and shadowed in the thin light. He has to be punished of course, for daring to think a cocky little boy such as this could violate her, use her up. Oh, Ginny makes Tom bleed, makes him scream, and laughs. Silly child, thinking that the pain matters. Thinking that the world could possibly care who rules the people living on it. The earth is raped by factories and mines and pollution and vitriol, but it doesn't care. These stupid little boys think that they can intimidate her, make her cry, simply by harming her flesh. Tom says I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and Ginny laughs. Does he truly think she's angry? There is no way in the world that Hades could have stolen Persephone if she had not wished to go, when will these idiotic men learn that simple truth?

She pulls her robe over her bony shoulders, naked and hidden underneath the dark folds. Slips into Harry's room, he hides in their home in summer as if he can pretend that they're his family. Ginny will give him all the family he could ever want for, she tells him so in a hot whisper in his ear as she shakes him awake.

He's sleep-addled, confused, but she puts her fingers to his mouth to hush him. Look, she says, and nods towards the long shadows where Tom is hiding. I told the serpents to bring me apples, she tells them both. Now I'll give you a taste in turn. That's how the story runs, after all.

She says it in their language, the secret sibilant sounds that nobody else will ever understand the trick to. She grew up with a set of twins, her clever wicked brothers who make her laugh, and to an eye less trained than hers Harry and Tom would seem to be a pair matched in the same manner. But she grew up with a set of twins, and can see that Harry and Tom are mirrored, refracted, different colours of light from the same prism. One impossibly good, one unimaginably evil, but these silly boys can't see the larger shape of things, can't see that they're like two tiny toys dancing for her amusement.

They dance now, slick skin slide and arch and gasp and strain, and Ginny watches. Her robe hangs open, letting a sliver of moonlight catch the swell of one breast, the curve of her stomach, but otherwise she's hidden by the dark. She loves them, these pretty boys who make each other bleed and whimper and beg. Worthy consorts, once they learn who holds the power.

She breaks Harry's expensive toy broom into splinters with her hands, small white hands with bitten nails. The people of her world have forgotten what their symbols mean, have lost the art of understanding reclamation and truth. But Ginny will teach them, she'll help them to see clearly again.

Joining Tom and Harry on the narrow width of the bed, letting their clumsy fingers fumble at her china flesh, Ginny smiles. In the morning she'll creep back to her bed, trap Tom back within the paper world he built himself. Harry will think up some excuse for why he doesn't have a broom anymore, and Ginny will pull her robe over her body and hide underneath it.

Soon, she tells them when they ask. Their time will come soon.

Tom lay silent for decades before she found him, before that idiotic Malfoy thought that he could trick a little girl with a little book, and he will wait a little longer still. Harry spent years in a dark, small room, knowing somehow that the world to show his place to him someday. They are skilled at waiting. The earth is patient, and knew eventually Eve would return to claim her Adam and her Lucifer. The earth is skilled at waiting, and doesn't mind a few years more.


End file.
